8mo ago

Elon Musk asks court to block OpenAI from converting to a for-profit

www.nbcnews.com

Summary

Elon Musk has filed a court injunction to block OpenAI’s transition to a fully for-profit business and prevent it from allegedly restricting investors from supporting competitors like his AI startup, xAI.

Musk accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of antitrust violations, claiming they used “group boycotts” to limit funding for rivals while benefitting from shared sensitive information.

OpenAI dismissed the allegations as baseless. The legal battle reflects escalating competition in the booming generative AI industry, valued at $157 billion, with Musk’s xAI emerging as a new challenger.

54 comments

All LLMs should be FOSS. They are created from everyone's data, and should therefore be free for everyone.
- No. They shouldn’t exist
  
  You're not wrong, but the genie is out of the bottle. VC thinks it's profitable and it can be done on a home computer so it's here to stay.
  Buckle up buckaroo.
  
  Screw AI, Corporations shouldn't exist
  
  Just like meth, right?
- What can be done about this besides complaining about it on the internet?
  
  If what you mean is forcing AI companies to make their LLMs FOSS, then there really isn't much you can do. There's the government regulation route, but I don't expect anyone with access to power would see things the same way. I know it's not a satisfying answer, but anything short of a total transformation of society isn't going to move the needle on this issue, and the question of "what can be done" in this context is an entire field of political discourse and philosophical debate.
Surely the incoming Musk administration won't do anything to influence the court's decision.
Now who asks a court to turn Musk's companies into non-profits to prevent conflicts of interest with him seemingly getting a government position?
If the world actually made sense, the phrase "Elon Musk asks court to" would possess the exact same significance (or lack thereof) as the phrase "Joe from down the street asks court to."
- The titles should be “Elon Musk files an injunction…”
- Not in this case, Elon does have some standing here. He was (is?) A significant investor in openai and he made those investments when the company was claiming it's goal was to advance safe ai, not make money, so this transition to for profit is sort of a bait and switch.
  That combined with his interest in a competing platform make it so Elon should at least be heard. I hate Elon as much as anyone on here but in this case I think he's in the right.
"I bought this country. I can do whatever I want!"
I don't generally agree with billionaires making government decisions (not that they didn't already), but i agree with Elon on this one. Nothing good will come from monetizing OpenAI.
- Idk if you agree as much as happen to have somewhat aligned interests for completely unrelated reasons.
  
  Yeah, poor word choice on my part. He wants to develop his own AI, and he sees this as a threat to that. I see monetization of AI as a scourge on society.
Someone get rid of this man.
- By any means necessary
  
  But no one will 😩
- Will no one rid us of this meddlesome priest?
  
  Thank you, Henry.
Seems Musk is already working hard on eliminating any competition he might have. Wants to get rid of NASA too, I mean, there are companies that can do this, y'know? Let me think, what company could take over from NASA... Mmmm... 🤔
- No company can take over Nasa. Nasa is a research organisation. It actually pushes the envelope and does things that have no apparent objective ROI.. like going to Mars and driving around a rover. Only a government funded organisation can do that.
  Of course we can just pour endless buckets of money into for-profits.. but then who decides what is done with the money... Nasa actually has the organization for this.. with scientists.. clear grant processes etc. etc.
  
  SpaceX exists only because of NASA.
  The Merlin engine is based on an engine developed by NASA, they even started by buying the exact same turbopumps directly from NASA's subcontractor
  The initial funding from Musk ($100 million) allowed SpaceX to develop the Falcon 1, in 2008 they only reached orbit on its 4th attempt. At this point they had no money left, a small rocket with a terrible track record and no customers for it.
  3 months later NASA awarded a $1.6 billion contract to SpaceX for the ISS resupply ! This is what allowed then to continue and develop the Falcon 9.
  
  Oh of course no company can, and especially SpaceX can't. SpaceX is a lot of fluff, and I'm sure some get great Engineers work there, but if you look at what they have done so far it's laughably bad. It took well over 3 billion from the US government to put people on Mars and so far it managed to blow up a banana over the Indian ocean... oh, and to needlessly blow up a launch pad.
  Doesn't matter though, Elon Musk who keeps yelling that the government is wasting too much money (but not on his company of course!!) now is in the position to make the US tax payer really bad through the nose and make sure the money lands in his pocket.
  He's still working hard on getting the 56 billion dollar for Tesla because of course... But he can get so much more for his mars scam!
but can both of them implode?
- I mean give OpenAi refused to sell to Musk, and Musk has his own competing product (Gronk) - I think he wants just one of them to implode. Might be able to accomplish that with four years in office, definitely will if this "team" manages to stay around longer.
  
  Thank you, that's a much better name. Considering the one thing it can't do is grok anything.
Damn broken clocks being right sometimes on accident.
Why? Is musk developing a competing AI.
- Of course he is. Fed with all that sweet sweet data from Xitter. So it will be a rascist Frankensteinian nightmare.
  
  "Sure, I'll display a recipe for vanilla pudding! First, eliminate all black people. Woke mobs must be removed for proper cohesion. Whisk until properly White™ and deny Palestine the right to exist. Vanilla pudding is a wonderful dessert to serve your fellow patriots as you eliminate the left virus from America™©®."
- He was initially invested in OpenAI, but then there was a dispute over the strategies and Musk left OpenAI. Musk now has the company xAI and is developing Grok.
  
  Ah, so he couldn’t buy a “founder” title. So he made his own.
- Pretty sure their self driving tech is via machine learning.
  
  They might use machine learning for some aspects, but it's primarily neural nets which are a different thing. Perception based neural nets are also very different than LLMs
The one time I hope Elon’s frivolous lawsuits pan out.
- That's because he wants to control this market and his xAI is behind.
  LLM should be FOSS.
  
  I agree but moving open AI further into the for-profit sector doesn’t seem to help with that goal.
I also would not like to see OpenAI shift to fully for-profit but Msuk's allegations lack merit.
Wow, he's right... For all the wrong reasons, but he's right for a change
The article says one of the main claims in the suit is that OpenAi is violating RICO (racketeering) laws. I don't get how they came up with that but I'm happy someone is turning the screws on them, even if it is Elon.

54 comments